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Comment by toyg | Hacker News Reader

has anybody ever challenged the PATRIOT Act on compliance with the 4th Amendment?

Not that it really matters, with the current Supreme Court being what it is, but still...

The issue, as I understand it, is that someone with standing to sue over the 4th amendment would be prosecuted under a FISA court. Those cases due to how the court was created and structured, do not end up in front of the supreme court.

It's one of those weird things in the US constitution which allow for congress to create new federal courts which don't ultimately fall under the jurisdiction of the regular federal courts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurisdiction_stripping

The FISA court only handles warrants, not prosecutions. Generally the only parties involved in a warrant request to a court (FISA or any other), are the judge and the government representative(s) seeking the warrant, though the court can pull in third-parties if it wants, e.g. for advice on legal questions.

A secret criminal prosecution trial would be unconstitutional under the Sixth Amendment ("In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial"). Though SCOTUS has unfortunately allowed for some classified material to be kept secret, sometimes (IIRC) even from the defendant and the jury, though usually this is ancillary stuff, not the direct evidence that would secure a conviction.

Warrants are what's at issue when the 4th amendment is in play. The thing you can't do when FISA issues a warrant is get the details about that warrant, who issued it, why it was issued. You can't even know that a FISA warrant was deployed against yourself.

Normal judicial warrants are public record.

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